I had been looking back through some early work and was amazed at how much snow we had in the winter of 2006. Amongst the more natural-looking snowy mountain images I’d taken from the top of Moel Eilio was this one of the Dinorwig Quarries below Elidir Fawr. I was fascinated by the cool purity of the winter snow gently trying to smooth over the vast, ugly, man-made scarring of the mountain’s lower regions.

The image has almost literally been sliced in half – the softer, wild and windswept upper reaches, and the angular, fractured blackness of the quarries below. Of course, the quarries hold their own fascination in terms of human history, culture and tenacity, but sometimes it’s only from a distance that you realise just how much destruction has gone on. Equally, it’s almost comforting to know just how much beauty still does exist, even within areas that have been so exploited, as here in Llanberis.